This richly illustrated book serves as the ideal guide to the items that litter the world's beaches. Forget sea shells and other fauna and flora. Here, you will find what a beachcomber is actually most likely to encounter these days: glass, plastic, wood, metal, paper, oil, and other sources of marine pollution! Complete with nearly 700 photographs, this guide shows the full range of marine debris items, each presented with insight and a pinch of humor. In addition, the author provides full details about these items. You will learn everything worth knowing about them. This includes not just their sources and decomposition stages. Discover the threat each item poses to these beautiful environments as well as prevention strategies, clean-up recommendations, alternative products, and recycling and upcycling ideas. Beyond the aesthetic issue, marine debris poses a threat to wildlife, human health, and economic welfare. This book arms you with the knowledge you need to combat these disgraceful and often hazardous eyesores. Become a beach detective! Travel the world's most beloved tourist destinations with this ultimate beach read and help restore these fascinating environments to their natural beauty. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9783319907277 20190304

Access to water is one of the most pressing global issues of the twenty-first century, particularly when set against the background of a rapidly growing global population. This book provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of the challenges facing water governance and regulatory choices. The recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals set forward an ambitious agenda of providing universal access to good quality water supply and sanitation services within a financially constrained environment: however, the various peculiarities of each country regarding water governance makes it difficult to identify and implement the best practices and benchmarks. Drawing together empirical studies from countries around the world, the editors and contributors combine extensive data to review the individual challenges facing each country, from the supervision of autonomous regulatory bodies to the question of centralization and the influence of local utility companies. This pioneering and practical volume will be of interest and value not only to students and scholars of water governance, but also to practitioners and regulators. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9783319985145 20190225

In A History of Water Engineering and Management in Yemen, Ingrid Hehmeyer describes the three-way relationship between water, land, and humans from ancient to medieval and premodern times. As illustrated in case studies from four sites, individual ecosystems necessitated different engineering and management approaches in order to make good use of the scarce water resources for both irrigated agriculture and domestic consumption. Material remains and written sources provide the evidence for a comprehensive examination of continuity and change; technical and managerial struggles, failures, and successes; the question of technology transfer; the impact of the religion of Islam on water use and allocation; and people's reactions in times of severe crisis. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9789004387010 20190311

Narratives of Environmental Challenges in Brazil and India: Losing Nature, edited by Zelia Bora and Murali Sivaramakrishnan, contextualizes the two subcontinents of India and Brazil and closely examines environmental issues from within and without. This collection focuses largely on the fate of forests and water in these two geographical terrains. This book explores narratives that reflect transformations: hitherto unprecedented demographic expansions, exploitation of natural resources, pollution and depletion of river and fresh water sources, uncontrollable demands on the energy front, waste and garbage disposal, drastic reduction of biodiversity. All of these are factors to research when one considers "losing nature." In philosophical as well as theoretical terms the question of what is nature, what is gained and lost in human-nature interaction, what is the essential "balance" of nature, are all important queries on a similar scale. Societal reality in present day Brazil and India is reconstructed and deconstructed at will by the powerful influence of the past alongside that of globalization and technocratic market structures. The volume contemplates the representation and interrogation of environmental issues in both subcontinents, Brazil and India. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9781498581141 20190225

Shows why plastics, in aggregate, have become a toxin to humans, wildlife, and the planet, and proposes novel solutions that involve neither traditional recycling nor giving up plastic. * Provides a realistic solution for our use of plastic: not to eliminate it, but to innovate it * Views plastic not only as a known environmental and health hazard but as a material critical to our future and therefore worth revising for future use * Explains what we must do-and by when-in order to be able to keep using plastic without harming the planet or our health * Shows the links between the environmental, toxicological, and socioeconomic challenges in our use of plastic, and how these dangers can be remedied by supply chain innovation * Introduces two significant disruptive innovations that if implemented, will save us from the growing problem posed by synthetics. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9781440864162 20190225

Environmental concerns have pushed the decarbonisation of the European economy high on the EU political agenda. This has renewed old debates about the role of nuclear energy in the European economy and society that gravitate around the issues of nuclear safety and radioactive waste management (RWM). RWM carries many elements of technical complexity, scientific uncertainty and social value, which makes policy decisions highly controversial. Public participation is usually believed to improve these decisions, ease their implementation by solving substantial conflicts, and enhance trust and social acceptance. Drawing upon sources including Euratom and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, the author offers a detailed overview of public involvement in RWM in the EU, analysing the implementation of national policies through official programmes and the views of stakeholders from all Member States. This book highlights the key successes and challenges in the quest for greater participation in RWM, and extrapolates insights for other contested energy infrastructures and controversies in land use. This book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in radioactive waste management, energy policy, and EU environmental politics and policy. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9781138211483 20190318

In Amity and Prosperity, the prize winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold exposes the tattered edges of the social fabric in rural America. In a work rich with narrative suspense, she explores the volatile personalities and politics of a small Allegheny town that has an abundance of natural gas but no municipal water supply. The result is a definitive guide to the fracking debate, and to the larger social and environmental hazards that are upending rural America. Stacey Haney, a lifelong resident of Amity, Pennsylvania, is struggling to support her children when the fracking boom comes to town. Like most of her neighbours, she sees the energy companies' payments as a windfall. Soon trucks are rumbling down her unpaved road and a fenced-off fracking site rises on adjacent land. But her annoyance gives way to concern and then to fear as domestic animals and pets begin dying and mysterious illnesses strike her family - despite the companies' insistence that nothing is wrong. Griswold masterfully chronicles Haney's transformation into an unlikely whistle-blower as she launches her own investigation into corporate wrong doing. As she takes her case to court, Haney inadvertently reveals the complex rifts in her community and begins to reshape its attitudes toward outsiders, corporations, and the federal government. Amity and Prosperity uses her gripping and moving tale to show the true costs of our energy infrastructure and to illuminate the predicament of rural America in the twenty-first century. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780374103118 20181008

This book offers new research on urban policy innovations that promote the application of blue-green infrastructure in managing water resources sustainably. The author argues that urban water managers have traditionally relied on grey infrastructural solutions to mitigate risks with numerous economic and environmental consequences. Brears explores the role urban water managers have in implementing blue-green infrastructure to reduce ecological damage and mitigate risk. The case studies in this book illustrate how cities, of differing climates, lifestyles and income-levels, have implemented policy innovations that promote the application of blue-green infrastructure in managing water, wastewater and stormwater sustainably to reduce environmental degradation and enhance resilience to climate change. This new research on urban policy innovations that promote the application of blue-green infrastructure in managing water resources sustainably will be of interest to those working on water conservation and policy. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9781137592576 20180430

This book describes the existential threats facing the global water systems from population growth and economic development, unsustainable use, environmental change, and weak and fragmented governance. It argues that `business-as-usual' water science and management cannot solve global water problems because today's water systems are increasingly complex and face uncertain future conditions. Instead, a more holistic, strategic, agile and publically engaged process of water decision making is needed. Building Resilience for Uncertain Water Futures emphasises the importance of adaptation through a series of case studies of cities, regions, and communities that have experimented with anticipatory policy-making, scenario development, and public engagement. By shifting perspective from an emphasis on management to one of adaptation, the book emphasizes the capacity to manage uncertainties, the need for cross-sector coordination, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholder with differing goals and conflict resolution. This book will be a useful resource for students and academics seeking a better understanding of sustainable water use, water policy and water resources management. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9783319712338 20180618

"Environmental journalist Fred Pearce travels the globe to investigate our complicated seven-decade long relationship with nuclear technology, from the bomb to nuclear accidents to nuclear waste. While concern about climate change has led some environmentalists to embrace renewable energy sources like wind and solar, others have expressed a renewed interest in nuclear power as an alternative source of carbon-neutral energy. But can humanity handle the risks involved? In Fallout, Fred Pearce uncovers the environmental and psychological landscapes created since the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Traveling from Nevada to Japan to the UK to secret sites of the old Soviet Union, he explores first the landscapes transformed by uranium and by nuclear accidents--sites both well-known and little known. He then examines in detail the toxic legacies of nuclear technology, the emerging dilemmas over handling its waste, the decommissioning of the great radioactive structures of the nuclear age, and the fearful doublethink over our growing stockpiles of plutonium, the most lethal and ubiquitous product of nuclear technologies. How, Pearce asks, has the nuclear experience has changed us? Is nuclear technology indeed the existential threat it sometimes appears? Should we be burdening future generations with radioactive waste that will be deadly for thousands of years? Fallout is the definitive look at humanity's nuclear adventure, for any reader who craves a clear-headed examination of the tangled relationship between a powerful technology and human politics, foibles, fears, and arrogance"-- Provided by publisher.
Mankind has a seven-decade long relationship with nuclear technology, from the bomb to nuclear accidents to nuclear waste. While concern about climate change has led some environmentalists to embrace renewable energy sources, others have expressed a renewed interest in nuclear power as an alternative source of carbon-neutral energy. But can humanity handle the risks involved? Pearce traveled the globe to uncover the environmental and psychological landscapes created since the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Should we be burdening future generations with radioactive waste that will be deadly for thousands of years? -- adapted from publisher info

Seeking new definitions of ecology in the tar sands of northern Alberta and searching for the sweetness of life in the face of planetary crises.Confounded by global warming and in search of an affirmative politics that links ecology with social change, Matt Hern and Am Johal set off on a series of road trips to the tar sands of northern Alberta-perhaps the world's largest industrial site, dedicated to the dirty work of extracting oil from Alberta's vast reserves. Traveling from culturally liberal, self-consciously "green" Vancouver, and aware that our well-meaning performances of recycling and climate-justice marching are accompanied by constant driving, flying, heating, and fossil-fuel consumption, Hern and Johal want to talk to people whose lives and fortunes depend on or are imperiled by extraction. They are seeking new definitions of ecology built on a renovated politics of land. Traveling with them is their friend Joe Sacco-infamous journalist and cartoonist, teller of complex stories from Gaza to Paris-who contributes illustrations and insights and a chapter-length comic about the contradictions of life in an oil town. The epic scale of the ecological horror is captured through an series of stunning color photos by award-winning aerial photographer Louis Helbig.Seamlessly combining travelogue, sophisticated political analysis, and ecological theory, speaking both to local residents and to leading scholars, the authors propose a new understanding of ecology that links the domination of the other-than-human world to the domination of humans by humans. They argue that any definition of ecology has to start with decolonization and that confronting global warming requires a politics that speaks to a different way of being in the world-a reconstituted understanding of the sweetness of life.Published with the help of funding from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan fund. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780262037648 20180625

Addressing participatory, transdisciplinary approaches to local stewardship of the environment, Grassroots to Global features scholars and stewards exploring the broad impacts of civic engagement with the environment. Chapters focus on questions that include: How might faith-based institutions in Chicago expand the work of church-community gardens? How do volunteer "nature cleaners" in Tehran attempt to change Iranian social norms? How does an international community in Baltimore engage local people in nature restoration while fostering social equity? How does a child in an impoverished coal mining region become a local and national leader in abandoned mine restoration? And can a loose coalition that transforms blighted areas in Indian cities into pocket parks become a social movement? From the findings of the authors' diverse case studies, editor Marianne Krasny provides a way to help readers understand the greater implications of civic ecology practices through the lens of multiple disciplines. Contributors: Aniruddha Abhyankar, Martha Chaves, Louise Chawla, Dennis Chestnut, Nancy Chikaraishi, Zahra Golshani, Lance Gunderson, Keith E. Hedges, Robert E. Hughes, Rebecca Jordan, Karim-Aly Kassam, Laurel Kearns, Marianne E. Krasny, Veronica Kyle, David Maddox, Mila Kellen Marshall, Elizabeth Whiting Pierce, Rosalba Lopez Ramirez, Michael Sarbanes, Philip Silva, Traci Sooter, Erika S. Svendsen, Keith G. Tidball, Arjen E. J. Wals, Rebecca Salminen Witt, Jill Wrigley. (source: Nielsen Book Data) 9781501714986 20180709